B.C. families of overdose victims urge government to provide safer drug supply
Families whose loved ones have fatally overdosed in British Columbia are calling for the province to prioritize a safer supply of drugs to match the urgency that came with the declaration of a public health emergency six years ago.
Lapointe said that number more than quadrupled last year, to 2,232 deaths, but emergency action has been lacking during the public health emergency that seems to have no end.Helen Jennens, whose two sons died, the first in 2011 and the second in 2016, after becoming addicted to prescription opioids, said she had high hopes that the province would have a policy on safer supply by now.
“It escalated to heroin because it’s cheaper and easier to get,” she said, adding he died of fentanyl that was added to that drug.Lapointe said 80 per cent of substance users are dying from fentanyl in illicit substances and that an overdose-reversing drug is increasingly not useful because the addition of a powerful benzodiazepine knocks people out.
“We held a death review panel in 2017 that made a recommendation in 2018 for more regulations around treatment and recovery and reporting requirements so that we would have some data on what’s effective. That still has not happened,” she said.
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